Entertainment

Google Giving Away Free Music—In China?

Despite Google's troubled standing in China in regards to leadership for issues like privacy policies, and the company's losing battle to Baidu, Google is heading to China with a free digital music market. The Wall Street Journal reports that Google is in the final planning stages of a joint venture with Chinese online music company, Top100.cn, which currently sells licensed music downloads.

With the deal, Google would be able to provide free, licensed music downloads. Having worked out a deal with Universal, and discussions having begun with EMI and Sony, Google is looking to do tings up big with a free music market overseas. The music files would be high-quality, and would also be flagged with a watermark that will track a song's journey through the web.

The main reason Google is being so aggressive in the Chinese market with such a music search is because the company is looking for a direct hit to better compete with baidu, which Google has been unable to topple in its three years in China. Baidu is still more widely used, and has become quite popular for music searches. How can Google lure users away from Baidu? Offer them search results and free downloads.

While it would probably be easy enough for Google to tack on an ad-supported model for this free music download service in most areas of the world, Google will be looking to premium services for revenue, through options like ringtones and special concert listings. Would this work back in the states? I don't see why not. There is a ton of attention being poured into online music search, with instant gratification for listening and downloading music online.

The movement hasn't even slowed down after Warner threw a lawsuit at Seeqpod, which has provided an API that's powering a number of independent music search services at this time. Whatever happens in China, however, could very well affect the way in which music is accessed, consumed and supplemented in other areas of the world. We're all quite anxious to see how it all plays out.

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